Methos

NEVERMIND! I thought to check and BETHINI had decided to completely scramble my INI settings which is more than a bit weird. loads of settings were changed including turning off shadows. I reset to ultra settings with recommended tweaks and all works. As you were.

Hello, me again! I have just finished a fresh STEP install (using only the STEP guide, I have no other mods installed yet) and have encountered a problem with lighting during testing. Some light sources emit a circle of light that immediately stops at a certain radius - there is no fade to it. See linked picture for what I mean as an example with a torch, but other light sources do this too such as braziers and other torch types. https://imgur.com/4HSdrIV This didn't happen on my other install so I am a bit confused, and everything looks in order to me: You can see all my plugin list and load order here: https://modwat.ch/u/OJLMethos/plugins But for a shorthand Loadorder for mods I think are relevant: Relighting Skyrim ELE STEP L&W patchload order sorted with LOOT Install order is per the STEP guide everything cleaned in line with LOOT guides Masters cleaned etc etc Any thoughts from the STEP or lighting masters out there?

Afraid not Angel, I just use STEP without an ENB. I have used them for maybe 50 hours of gameplay and testing and they haven't been the cause of any crashes as far as I could tell. I debug crashes through Papy and .netscriptextender and couldn't see anything that implicated them as a cause when I did crash. They're one of my fav mods TBH! Love immersion :) FYI the nexus ID of the footprints mod I use is: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/3808

All, I just wanted to link to a parallel thread that I am having on the Nexus forums where there have been some really helpful replies on conflict resolution and xEdit management. I thought that it would prove helpful for anyone else who comes along and reads these forums with similar issues. (hope you dont mind me linking to another forum) https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/8462133-a-request-for-help-im-out-of-ideas-to-fix-my-ctds/page-3&do=findComment&comment=78253818

Thanks for the compliment... I did play for a few hours and didn't crash but TBH that's not unusual. Sometimes I crash once every 3 hours, sometimes I crash repeatedly in a very short period of time... Interestingly I think there maybe some conflict going on with certain internal cells.. I crashed LOADS (like, every 5 - 10 minutes) in a certain cave (think it was called "leg snapper" or "leg breaker" cave) fighting some bandits. But though I was crashing frequently, it wasn't at the same point (i.e. on 'seeing' or loading a certain mesh or texture) and ultimately I was able to clear the cave without crashing. I am starting to think it is certainly a script related issue... three issues I see persistently are: 1. Crashing when using Spellsiphon spells (a scripted spell mod)... again not always but there's obviously some circumstances where the game falls over and that coincides with me casting a spell. I love this mod and it makes casting "worth it" in my opinion so will continue to hunt for the fix. 2. HDT SMP physics on Cloaks of Skyrim - I think this is the crash most often occurring when I load a game. Frequently when I CTD on a load (after say, a death) I see the HDTSMP.dll plugin in the probable crash stack as seen in the .net script framework. I really like physics so not sure what I am going to do about this one. 3. Something to do with kill moves - sometimes when it goes 3rd person camera for a killmove, the game has a specific crash where it locks up, is "not responding" but doesn't crash to desktop.. I have to kill the process. Unfortunately I dont get a crash log in this instance so harder to pin down... Next step for me is to review further conflicts in xEdit (I appreciate it may not yield great results, but I like to be thorough) and also specifically look at script CR in xEdit...

Hi Citizen Indeed I took my first proper delve into xEdit conflict resolution and spent the entire of yesterday reading the xEdit tome and working through the conflicts in my Load Order... updates for those who are interested: 1. I think literally every mod had a red conflict somewhere in it and so I started having a look at random ones to just get a feel for what they are, what were conflicts etc etc. Interestingly i found it was very similar to MO conflict flag system, the vast majority of red errors were where patches / fixes had overwritten something as intended and looked completely benign. 2. As there were literally over 62,000 records in the list, I decided that going through each one would be a bit long winded - so I started to look at an automated merged patch (which is no longer supported in xEdit, and directed me to Wyre Bash). So I made a Bashed patch and then had a look at that in xEdit because I was aware that automated processes aren't as good as manual ones. For the most part it did a good job but had some "errors" where unpatched data was overwriting a patch I wanted to keep. I fixed this and made some further enhancements where I thought necessary. 3. Through this process I didn't uncover anything that I believed would cause any kind of CTD. The majority of the conflicts were very superficial such as RND and COCO competing over what attributes to give when eating / drinking. Though this was just looking at conflicts made by the Bashed Patch and so maybe its scope doesn't cover the important juicy stuff. 4. Next I looked at any "critical conflicts" highlighted by xEdit and to my surprise, all of them were benign false-positives. Things such as Frostfall and Cloaks of Skyrim having different hexidecimal colours in fields that were (according to the mod authors) literally not used. I changed them anyway to get rid of the pink flag. I think the next step is to start going through the records 1 by 1 and I dont believe I saw anything that would cause the game to crash in the above and while I may have my RnD food giving me the correct, merged properties now - I literally didn't even know it wasn't to begin with - so I feel I havn't fixed much.

Hi Mercury71 Short answer to have I used xEdit to search for conflicts is: no. I have looked into it a little, but it appeared to me that there were lots and lots and LOTS of conflicts all over the place, including in the master files themselves and various online "tutorials" I watched said "to ignore them"... whichj isn't very helpful because the next question is "why, and which others do I ignore". I felt that deleting conflicts without understanding which were an issue and which were OK was not a good approach... and I have yet to delve further than that Do you have any learning resources to recommend on the xEdit front, that guide users through conflict identification and resolution? Thanks! edit: a similar post i made on the Nexus forums got a very similar response and a chap linked me to the tomb for xEdit as found here https://tes5edit.github.io/docs/5-conflict-detection-and-resolution.html thought I would share - am working through it now to try and resolve whatever conflicts i may have :D

Papyrus Logs.zip Hey TechAngel Thanks for your reply. For sure random CTDs suck. I have spent many many hours trying to work out why my game crashes despite best efforts to make it stable as I go... I checked out RNAD_RWT_patch per your suggestion, RND has updated within the last few days so I updated it also, though I am still crashing. You talk about custom patching of the new mods and I was curious about that. I have downloaded every compatibility patch that I am aware of required for the mods I use (beyond STEP) - but these obviously aren't custom. I have used xEdit in a limited fashion (and in LE many years ago used TES5Edit) to clean files but I am not familiar with it beyond that. Could you elaborate further on what you meant by custom files and where the best place is to learn more about how to create them / whether they are relevant? My biggest challenge right now is that I just don't know how to debug my game further. Part of my brain is screaming surely surely surely there is some way, some tool or crash logger that can say X broke because of Y. If there isn't then there must be a tool that can say X messes with the same scripts / stuff / things / locations as Y and will likely break. For simple and literal file overwrites, MO calls out the conflicts - but there's so much more going on behind the scenes (especially with scripts)... No one seems to be able to direct me to a learning resource or tool that highlights the issues, explains what they are and how to resolve it.. I'm not looking to be spoon fed a fix (and indeed know that is impossible), I just need to know where the heck to look!

For what it is worth, I use STEP as a core base for my modding and I am currently using footsteps with your animations and no apparent issues... not the thorough testing that you guys would usually do, but from my POV they work fine.

Hello and I hope you are here to help! I'll start with an apology for yet another "CTD, plz halp" thread, but I have exhausted my knowledge and can't seem to find the solution on my own, so I'm really hoping someone here can. I have been "playing" and modding Skyrim (originally LE, now SE) for 5 years and have literally never finished the main quest, not once. Every time I try to tailor the game I get CTDs which I never seem to be able to fix. I then end up CTD'ing more than I play and ultimately give up. A year or so passes and I build up the courage to give it another go... rinse and repeat the cycle. Issue description: Needed information to help diagnose / fix: LOOT / xEdit / FNIS Info: Papyrus logs: Extra Information I have put a lot of time and effort into trying to properly mod my game but have no more knowledge to try and fix it, so I really really hope that someone out there can help :) It took me two days to compile this post, but if I have missed something you think would be help, please let me know and I will happily include it! Thanks to all who bothered to read :D

Hi and thanks for ongoing replies. There is no practical practical difference between what I did (removing the mods that were not part of the guide, adding the mods that I had missed, double checking the detailed installed instructions for all mods in case any had changed since the 0.1.0 / 3.0.0 versions, checking the install orders were identical, LOOTING, running patches etc etc) and starting from scratch. Your recommended approach is sound and would help identify misbehaving mods (and is indeed the approach I followed to narrow down the "thinner torches mod" that was causing my game to crash on load - so thanks :D). However, I'm most interested in an approach that will help with skyrim CTDs on a loading screen / randomly running around that are not easily repeatable... i.e. hard to create a "repeatable offending situation". Further issues arise in mod setups which have various dependencies, patches, compatibility patches and so on... to "disable half your mods" would likely make the game crash, but for very different reasons to the original offender. Have googled and I recall Papy was the only logging tool in LE but IIRC it was just for scripts and not actually that useful if you were very fluent in "insert script language here".... is Papy still the only option for debugging?

Thanks for your replies so far. I went through and removed all mods that were not part of the latest STEP guide (0.2.0b link ) and added anything that I missed. I then re-ran the patches, LOOT etc. Good news: I no longer have any missing masters Bad news: I CTD on trying to load either my existing "test" save or start a new game... oh the irony of having less errors with more problems. There used to be a troubleshooting guide on STEP back in the day to help willing but ignorant individuals like myself learn how to fix stuff on our own - because I appreciate its very VERY hard to do any diagnosing on the forums without the right data. Is there anywhere you can point me to try and resolve this. I dont even have an error log / data dump to trawl through to try and understand the failures. Any help appreciated thanks

Wow. You are right. I followed the STEP v3 guide, which is apparently older than 0.2.0, which I obviously missed. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Back to the drawing board for me.

Hi, I have used STEP for years on various Skyrim installs and was happy to see a SE version when I decided I wanted to play the SE version. My previous skyrim installs were very heavily modded so I am not entirely new to this, but it has been years since my last forey... that said - onto the issue. I have completed the STEP SE guide and I believe installed all mods correctly, but in MO I am getting the following "notification" about missing masters required by STEP CR Patch, STEP L&W patch and a few other mods installed by the STEP Process, the full list of missing masters is below Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp Book Covers Skyrim - Lost Library.esp Book Covers Skyrim.esp Complete Alchemy & Cooking Overhaul.esp Complete Crafting Overhaul_Remastered.esp Convenient Horses.esp DeadlySpellImpacts.esp Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul.esp Lanterns Of Skyrim II.esm Oakwood.esp Relationship Dialogue Overhaul.esp TheChoiceIsYours.esp WACCF_Armor and Clothing Extension.esp dD - Enhanced Blood Main.esp My game loads fine and I have played a few hours on a test character but have not done any more "testing" beyond that. So no issues to speak of except the step patches obviously seem to link to mods that STEP does not install. I could not find refernece to this anywhere on the STEP guide or the STEP patch Nexus page, but please forgive me if I have overlooked something. Is this an issue, or an expected side effect of the STEP patch looking to make itself compatible with all these non-step mods?